Almost all the browsers hide the password field with asterisks for security purposes. Saving you passwords in Chrome or Firefox saves you the hassle of remembering them all. If your password wasn’t saved for some reason, and have a complex passcode, it’s nice to be able to see them when needed.
Rather than going through the entire reset password hassle here’s how to see what’s hidden with a simple HTML browser tip.
Reveal Passwords Behind Asterisk in Google Chrome
Open any website where you have your password saved, right click on the password field and go to Inspect Element.
The HTML Editor in Chrome opens. Look for input type = “password” field and change “password” to “text” and press Enter to save.
An easy way to find that line of code is hit Ctrl + F and type: password in the search field and arrow to it.
Then you’ll be able to see your password on the page.
Reveal Password in Mozilla Firefox
The process if virtually the same in Firefox. Right click the password field and click Inspect Element.
A gray bar will appear with the password field highlighted. Press Alt+M or click on the icon shown below to open the Markup panel.
It will show you the code for the password field. Just look at the highlighted line and change type=”password” to “text”.
Do remember to change the type back to password, especially if you have multiple users on your computer.
This may be handy to know. However Firefox will tell you the passwords under the options menu.
It would be worth noting that in IE 9 this is also possible using the developer tools that are now built into IE.
Doesn’t this make you more vulnerble to hacks? Can’t anyone then find out your password? I am not tech savvy, so maybe I am missing something here.